[TriLUG] OT: lack of security at BofA

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

On Sun, 21 Dec 2014, Pete Soper wrote:

>  They make it a bit hard to use, but overall my wife and I have found 
> the virtual credit card mechanism Citibank VISA offers to be a huge 
> asset.

Thanks. Had never heard of these. BofA has them too is seems but you have to do 
it via on-line banking. I tried on-line banking when BofA first brought it out, 
but the website was so dodgy, I couldn't believe anything there would be secure. 
When I found out I was liable for anything that went wrong (eg fraud) through 
that interface, I discontinued using it.

I read about these cards on the AARP website

http://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2014/virtual-credit-cards-not-catching-on.1.html

People don't like them because they're inconvenient and they have no liability 
for fraud with the regular cards, so there's no apparent benefit. It seems when 
the chip and pin cards come in that the liability for fraud is going to be 
shifted to the user (see wikipedia for the EMV cards), since it's "impossible" 
to commit fraud with them and any problems are therefore due to the users.

I find that there is 18G$ of credit card fraud a year

http://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2014/virtual-credit-cards-not-catching-on.3.html

That's about $100 a person. At 2% fees, that requires everyone to be doing 5k$ 
of transactions a year before the banks start earning money

Joe


-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) austintek (dot) com - azimuthal equidistant
map generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!